Chapter 1

I was born in Pennsylvania in 1825 in that section of the state called "Pennsylvania Dutch," but my pa was German, not Dutch. He always said he was Deutsch, which most people heard as Dutch, so I guess that's where the name came from. Anyway, I was the last of 15 kids, Ma didn't last long after I was born. Pa didn't blame me, at least he said that he didn't, but that didn't keep me from blaming me.

Back in Germany, Pa had been a gunsmith, but he got conscripted into the Hessian Army and sent as a mercenary to help the British fight the rebelling colonies. Pa was one of the lucky ones who was captured and paroled to Pennsylvania with a land grant. In Pennsylvania, he met a woman and married her, that was my ma.

Anyway, Pa was no farmer, so he managed to sell his land grant to a local who wanted to increase the size of his farm. Pa used the money to put himself into business as a gunsmith. Pickings were kind of slim at first, but Pa was a first class craftsman, so he did right well for himself and the family after only a couple of years.

Pa started out making fowling pieces, mostly blunderbusses, because that's what most of his customers wanted, but his real love was rifles. After a few years of making fowling pieces, Pa put enough money together to purchase the equipment to make rifled barrels. That's when he got famous. Everybody who had the money wanted one of Hans Ostermier's rifles. It wasn't long before Pa was selling his rifles all over the country; pretty soon, he had enough money to do what he called "semi-retirement." What that really meant was that Pa had time to work on his great invention—a flintlock breech-loading rifle.

This wasn't the first such device, the famous Ferguson Rifle was invented about 20 years or so earlier. The problem was that all of the breech-loading flintlocks were a pain to maintain or too expensive to manufacture. Neither one of these problems bothered Pa, simply because he was not interested in a mass produced weapon for the Army or for sale to the common people. No, Pa's rifle was a thing of beauty, and everyone was custom made and one of a kind. Maintenance was not a problem for Pa's rifles because they were made of the finest quality materials and finished to a fare-the-well. All you had to do was keep them oiled, and they would last a lifetime under constant use. Price was no problem, either: you had to be rich to buy one of Pa's special breech-loaders.

As each of us boys got older, Pa would apprentice us out to various crafts, and the girls were married off as you would expect. Finally, there was just me. Pa and I lived in the old house which was also his workshop. He decided that I would become his apprentice and learn gunsmithing. Well, it turned out that I had a knack for the trade. It took a while, but I got to be as good at it as Pa, and Pa took me on as a partner. I'm afraid that I got something of a swelled head over that, and it led to trouble.

I was sweet on a girl who lived down the street in our town, but her pa hated the "Dutch." I never did find out why, but that's the way it was. Peggy Abercrombie was a beauty, at least in my eyes, and she was sought by many boys in the town. I'm still not sure how it got started, but I got into a fight with another boy my age over her (as far as I know, now, she never looked twice at either one of us) and the fool pulled a knife. As it happened, I was unarmed, so I was now fighting for my life without much chance of surviving.

It was my great good luck to spot a stone beside the alley where we were fighting. In desperation, I picked up the rock and threw it at the other guy with the knife. The rock was about 8 inches in diameter (did I say that I was unusually strong?) and it hit the fool square in the face. Of course, that stopped the fight right there, so I checked to see how badly the guy was hurt. Shit, he wasn't breathing! The rock had smashed in his face and crushed his brains.

I ran home and told my pa what had happened. Pa was right agitated! The father of the boy I had killed was head of some secret organization in town, and Pa was worried that they would take revenge on me. Now, I was 15 years old, and certainly old enough not to get into scrapes like this, but it was too late to worry about that, now.

Pa said that I had to run away to keep from being murdered. We planned on this for about two hours and decided that the best solution was for me to go West. Pa outfitted me with a horse to ride and a pack horse. The pack horse was loaded with some food, cooking utensils, and other necessities. We didn't have a tent, so I was going to have to buy one once I got to the next town.

For weapons, for surely I was going to need them, he gave me an eight-inch stiletto, a hunting knife with a 10-inch blade, and, most prized of all, a new Ostermier rifle in .55 caliber. The rifle had a 40-inch barrel and was a real beauty. He also gave me 100 of the special paper cartridges it used and a bullet mold. I already knew all about how to make the cartridges, since I had been doing that for years.

I was ready to go by the time it was hard dark, so I left my pa, never to see him again, and headed West. Actually, I traveled south for 12 miles until I came to the main road leading west. There was a town here and I bought the stuff I needed that Pa had not been able to give me. I used a little bit of the money he had given me, 20 Spanish doubloons, and 10 English gold pieces. I carried the money in a money belt I was careful not to let anybody see, because that was a veritable king's ransom as far as the people of Pennsylvania were concerned.

I traveled out of town and found a place to camp about 100 yards from the road. I had eaten in the town, so all I had to do was to tend the animals, pitch my tent and crawl in. I hardly had my blanket spread before I was asleep.

I think that I should take this time to describe my rifle, since it plays such a key role in the rest of my story. My father was a true genius, since he designed a flintlock that would work in the rain if the user were reasonably careful. The rifle used a paper cartridge which contained the powder and the ball. There was a chamber for the cartridge which was just a little shorter than the cartridge, so that when the chamber was sealed, the end of the paper cartridge was torn off, causing some of the powder to spill into the ignition chamber. The closing of the breech block simply pushed the torn paper out of the lock and it was lost to who-knows-where. At worst, a quick breath by the shooter could blow it out of the way.

Closing the breech block, which was done by raising it from the bottom of the lock by a lever, wedged it into place in such a way as to seal the breach closed. The lever locked into place when it was fully closed so there was no chance of the block coming open when the rifle was fired.

The lock further differed from the conventional flintlock by the way the flint was mounted and struck. The flint was held rigidly in place inside the block, and it was struck by a piece of steel to form the spark. This piece of steel was simply a rod projecting through a hole in the block, and the rod was pushed down against the flint by a strong spring released when the trigger was squeezed. The rod was tapered slightly to form a gas-tight seal when the powder burned.

The firing routine was pretty simple: the lever was pulled down, causing the breech block to open and exposing the firing chamber. A cartridge was placed in the combustion chamber by hand, and the breech block was closed and locked in place by raising the lever. The hammer was pulled back by hand and the gun was ready to fire. All of this normally took less than five or six seconds and could be done even when the shooter was lying prone.

The only time consuming part of servicing the rifle was the replacement of the flint, which took several minutes. Maybe I can figure out a way around that problem.

The rifle had one further advantage: it could be used as a conventional muzzle-loader if the shooter ran out of cartridges. Of course, this slowed down the rate of fire and forced the shooter to stand while he reloaded. Oh, well, you can't have everything—the next thing you know, somebody will want a repeating rifle that can hold several cartridges at one time. Dream on, that's where inventions come from.